So Evolution decided to go sideways yesterday. I think this was prompted by me changing my SMTP server password. But rather than prompt me for a new password, Evolution simply froze when sending mail. As in “by-all-appearances-totally-hosed-because-the-UI-hasn’t-been-even-redrawn-in-several-minutes” frozen. Attempts to make Evolution forget the old password don’t change this outcome. Ugh.

While it would be ever so slightly gratifying to report a bug on this issue, I figure the Evolution developers won’t be particularly interested since I’m using version 2.22 and the latest is 2.24. Hell, I’d be inclined to blow me off on that basis. And I figure, “The Fedora 10 Preview has Evolution 2.24, I can just update to that.” What could go wrong, right? Well, if you’re the least bit familiar with these things, you know lots can go wrong; and you’re probably figuring that this is where things really start to go south.

But it’s not. In defiance of the odds, that part went okay. And when it was done, the shiny new Evolution 2.24 installation would send mail just fine. There was only one niggling problem: attempting to compose a new message now froze Evolution. Okay, so it just went mostly okay.

Ugh. But at this point I’m inclined to blame myself. After all, I knew I was tempting fate by upgrading to a partial set of Fedora 10 Preview packages. So I figure there must be some poorly-connected dependency I need to upgrade; and I figure “Fuck it; just upgrade the whole damn thing.” And I proceed to torrent the Fedora 10 Preview DVD image.

Deluge pulls it down at around 1 MB/s. Nice. On my bottom-tier cable connection. And I proceed to burn the disc image.

Hmm… Can’t mount that one. Crap. Try again (with Nautilus), but at a slower burn speed.

Damnit. That one won’t mount either. WTF? Check the SHA1 sum. It’s good. Okay, install K3B and try it. Its interface is a mess; but at least it’s produced reliable results in the past.

Fuck. Number three won’t mount and won’t boot. Another coaster.

Or is it? Stick it in the MacBook Pro. Hm. That reads it fine. Hm. Now let’s try stile (which runs i386 Fedora 9). Well fuck me. stile mounts it and boots it as well.

So let me get this straight: my DVD burner on hinge will burn apparently-valid DVDs that the same damn burner can’t read.